Yakhni Pulav
Years back, I saw a recipe by Farah Khan on Shilpa Shetty’s youtube channel. Both are celebrities from Indian Film Industry.
The only thing that stuck out in my mind about this dish is that, rice and chicken cooked in a cooker with curd.
I am not known for tasty food or my culinary skills, but more so for experimental cooking. Few weeks back, I put some chicken and rice in the cooker and steamed together, what resulted was definitely not a very tasty rice dish, but I anyways served it to my friends saying that it is Yakhni Pulav and it is supposed to look and taste the way it had turned out.
Call it coincidence, or tech giants spying on us, I opened youtube and I came across a video. Yakhni Pulav by Farah Khan. This time it was on Farah Khan’s youtube channel.
Just because I had recently concocted a recipe for this dish, my curiosity to find the delta in actual recipe and my experiment, led me to watch the video.
Mistake 1: chicken is cooked first and rice is added later. When I experimented, I had added all of it together.
Mistake 2: The recipe contains garam masala, I had totally skipped adding any masala to the experimented version.
Mistake 3: The recipe contains potatoes, I still think these can be totally optional, but Farah recommends adding them.
Mistake 4: The rice is cooked only in curd, I had added curd only for the flavour in my initial attempt.
Today, I found myself in a mood to do some fine cooking. Having had so many Yakhni Pulav triggers, it was on top of my mind.
This time, I followed the recipe to the mota-moti extent. What turned out was a better version of Yakhni Pulav. Atleast this time it looked the way Farah’s Yakhni Pulav looked like.
If you ask me did it taste the same? To answer that, I will have to wait for an invitation from Farah to relish the famous Yakhni Pulav cooked at her home, only then can I give my verdict..!
Anyway, thank you Farah for the recipe, and for your inspirational story of going from being a dance assistant, to a choreographer to a director!
